Published Books

Charlie Carver, 14, is bored with summer vacation, lonely, and, yes, just a bit spoiled. Longing for adventure, he persuades his friend Matt Lang to join him on a bike ride to an abandoned farmhouse outside Rochester, Minnesota, during tornado season. Matt tells Charlie to stand guard outside while he explores the house. When Matt disappears Charlie's boring summer changes in a hurry.

Catherine's parents leave the shores of a great inland sea, where Catherine's grandfather tended the lighthouse, and join settlers moving west. Longing for the life they've left behind, Catherine and Mumma resign themselves to making a home on the flat prairies. When Papa sets out on horseback to register their homestead they begin a worried vigil for his return. After a storm smashes their only lantern, Catherine has to solve how to guide him home.

Decima Blake, 13, understands how you can lose a thing, a toy, a pen, but she can't figure out how her family "lost" its house. Forced with her parents and sister to move in with their grumpy grandfather, Decima explores her new home and makes a discovery that could change her family's fortunes. But she's not sure what to do next.

Casey Templeton, spending the summer in Rochester, Minnesota, signed up at the last minute to be a counsellor at Camp Nestor, deep in the northern woods. His suspicions are aroused even before the buses reach camp. Another of the new counsellors seems to hate kids (then why be a camp leader?), and the lead bus has to come to a screeching halt just outside the gates to avoid the unconscious body of the resident caretaker. Clearly, the summer will be anything but normal, and all of Casey's skills will be needed to figure out what's happening.

Casey Templeton, spending the summer in Rochester, Minnesota, signed up at the last minute to be a counsellor at Camp Nestor, deep in the northern woods. His suspicions are aroused even before the buses reach camp. Another of the new counsellors seems to hate kids (then why be a camp leader?), and the lead bus has to come to a screeching halt just outside the gates to avoid the unconscious body of the resident caretaker. Clearly, the summer will be anything but normal, and all of Casey's skills will be needed to figure out what's happening.

When a storm threatens to keep Hazel inside with nothing to do she creates an adventure for herself and her pepper-red cat, with his pepper-yellow coat and his pepper-green hat. They fly off in a gold balloon to a world to a world full of colors. They dance and sail and swim - will they ever fly home? With lavender doors and turquoise lights this book introduces the concepts of exotic colors that extend beyond the primaries...or even the secondaries!

This story will appeal to parents and young children who love the sound of words and delight in visual details.

Three poetry collections for children: I Said to Sam (a Scholastic book which sold more than 70,000 copies world wide), Animal Rap and Far Out Fables and Just Because, a Collection of Light Verse and Nonsense.

First chapter books: the Sebastian series, and No Presents Please.

Teen books: in the Casey Templeton Mystery series: Hate Cell and Old Bones.

She has had poems published in many anthologies and her work has been showcased on both CBC Radio and Television.

Barbara Hartmann has illustrated a number of trade and educational books for children. Selected publications include "Fishes in the Ocean", "Then and Now" and "There's Music in a Pussycat",all written by Richard Thompson); "Purple Hair? I Don't Care!", written by Dianne Young; and "The Abeleda Voluntary Firehouse Band" (Dianne Young)